Former Eskom bosses Brian Molefe and Matshela Koko blasted

By Yoliswa Sobuwa and Penwell Dlamini - 18 February 2019

Restaurant workers use a gas lamp after load-shedding in Joburg last week. Former Eskom bosses Brian Molefe and Matshela Koko have come under fire for their load-shedding interviews. Image: Waldo Swiegers

Two controversial former Eskom executives Brian Molefe and Matshela Koko have leapt to the power utility's crisis to make a public comeback.

The two, who were implicated in allegedly running Eskom down, appeared to have found their voices when they gave TV interviews as experts on load-shedding at the weekend.

Their re-emergence has attracted criticism from some quarters.

Yesterday, eNCA aired its interview with Molefe on the problems at Eskom, a few days after Koko was interviewed by the SABC.

The two believe that Eskom has sufficient capacity and there is no reason for load-shedding.

"When I joined Eskom there was a huge maintenance backlog and we devised a plan to implement maintenance in such a way that it did not lead to load-shedding.

"We caught up with the backlog and came on schedule. We increased planned maintenance, cut unplanned ones and the outages. I am not sure of what is happening at the moment," Molefe said.

He left Eskom in November 2016 after weeks of public outcry following the release of the public protector's state of capture report.

The report showed Molefe and Ajay Gupta, the eldest of the Gupta brothers, had made 58 calls to each other between August 2015 and March 2016.